Bush&Co.'s scandals are coming so rapidly and getting so huge that it's
hard to lay off talking about them at length, but in this new year, let's
step back a bit for some longer-range perspectives.
In no particular order, here from decades of politics-watching are a dozen
bits of insight, most of which were reinforced by events in year 2005.
Below each is some discussion of how those truisms flowered in the Bush
era.
1. If you have a sturdy dam that develops a crack, fix it quickly
before the seeping water enlarges the opening and a flood pours down on
the populace.
Given their history and first year in office, the Bush Administration
should have been seen early for what they were -- a pack of rapacious,
power-hungry incompetents. But, after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks, a
frightened citizenry and Congress trusted them to do the right thing. The
nominal opposition party caved early and often. The Patriot Act, rushed
through Congress right after 9/11, opened the floodgates to shredding
Constitutional protections of civil liberties, which then led to the
accumulation of more and more police powers in the Executive Branch. (Let
us never forget Lord Acton's warning: "Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely.") Now, four-plus years later, because
the governmental breech wasn't repaired quickly enough, it probably will
take impeachment and conviction to even begin to restore Constitutional
rule in this country.
2. If you persist in trying to force a square peg into a round opening,
you will cause great damage to the peg, to the opening, and frustration
for yourself, because it simply won't go. Corollary: If you're in a deep
hole, first thing to do: stop digging.
The Iraq War was worked out years before the invasion by neo-con
intellectuals who thought their goals would be met quickly once Saddam was
toppled. They did what was necessary to convince Congress and the American
people to support the war -- lied, deceived, swore falsely -- and then ran
headlong into a reality for which they were totally unprepared. As
occupiers, they did everything late, wrong or backasswards, including
bringing Iraq full-scale corruption, massive torture and constant
humiliation, and likely civil war and disintegration of its unitary state.
The end result will be a religiously-dominated state of some sort opposed
to U.S. interests, heavily influenced by Iran. The U.S. eventually will
have to leave Iraq, but even though the handwriting long has been on the
wall, Bush refuses to find a quick, face-saving way out and will "stay the
course" until "victory." Translated: many more thousands of Americans and
Iraqis will have to die because Bush cannot, will not, admit the gross
political miscalculation that led to that war and the need to drastically
change his goals. In all things Iraq, Bush turns out to be extremist
Islam's top recruiting agent. Yet another brief for the impeachment of
Bush/Cheney.
3. Secrets eventually surface, especially the worst ones you're trying
to hide.
The Bush Administration is the most secretive in U.S. history -- for a
good reason: They have much to hide, a lot of it criminal in nature. The
latest secret is an outgrowth of the false reasoning that grew out of the
Iraq War and the official policy permitting torture. According to this
twisted logic, Bush can do whatever he wants, including violate laws
passed by Congress, whenever he asserts that he's acting as
"commander-in-chief" during "wartime." Yes, of course, there is no
official declaration of war, but Bush says we're at "wartime," and that
war will last forever -- ergo, shut up, lie back and don't resist your
fate. The latest secret to leak involves his illegal orders to the
National Security Administration to "monitor" (data-mine) phone calls and
emails of millions of American citizens, without first obtaining court
warrants, as required by law. Breaking that law is an impeachable offense.
(Note: These classified secrets are being leaked, by and large, by Bush
Administration military and security officials, conservatives, anxious to
get this reckless crew out of the White House before they sail our country
into even more dangerous waters and crash us on rocks and icebergs.)
4. It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes. -- J.
Stalin
We have a long way to go to restore integrity and transparency to the
touchscreen and vote-tabulation system in this country -- right now it's
the major political scandal of our time. Secret software controlled by
Republican-supporting corporations can easily be manipulated and
vote-tallies altered without leaving any evidence of the fraud. But a
goodly number of states and localities are raising serious questions about
the legitimacy of the process. Several states have threatened to decertify
touch-screen machines, and some have done so. It is anticipated that
class-action and private lawsuits will be filed shortly against Diebold,
and that the Securities & Exchange Commission may begin a fraud probe of
this leading e-voting company. One can almost spot a growing trend
questioning the viability of e-voting. But, as I say, we're still in for
manipulated tallies in 2006 and 2008 unless major reforms are demanded and
implemented nationwide by the citizenry. Ironically, when manipulated
elections are held in foreign countries, and hundreds of thousands of
aggrieved citizens pour into the streets to demand an overturning of the
tampered-with vote results, the American media and Bush Administration
officials celebrate this example of democracy in action. Notice any
difference when it comes even to raising the question of whether our
elections are honest?
5. Most people passively accept a lot, but when a lot becomes way too
much, they get very angry and usually look to exact revenge on those doing
them dirt.
There is a "tipping point" in all major social upheavals; one day, things
go on as normal and then the next day, when critical mass is just right,
citizens move in a forthright manner. Examples: the American and French
revolutions, the overthrow of Soviet communism, the '60s civil rights,
anti-war and feminist movements. It's taken a while, but the American
people -- including an increasing number of conservative Republicans --
more and more are indicating that they've lost trust and faith in the Bush
Administration's officials and policies. Keys to this eye-opening have
been the Administration's bumbling Iraq policy, its utter incompetence in
dealing with the Katrina disaster, and its lies and deceits with regard to
running roughshod over citizens' privacy rights by a Chief Executive who
is acting more like a banana-republic dictator than the leader of a
democratic republic. In addition, half a trillion dollars are being spent
on Bush's never-ending Iraq adventure, while the upkeep of streets and
infrastructure, and popular social programs, are being cut way back. The
middle-class is being pushed more toward the lower end of the economic and
cultural spectrum while the wealthy get virtually all the goodies. The
economy remains in the doldrums. The citizenry are getting fed up and
increasingly indicate their willingness to take out their anger on GOP
members of the House and Senate in 2006.
6. Bullies feed off submission and acquiescence, and retreat in the
face of united opposition.
It is beyond comprehension why it took an entire first term for the
Democrats to understand that you can't make nice with those who are
working to destroy you as an effective political force. But the Dems did
act as if politics could be conducted as usual, thus becoming enablers of
Bush's most destructive policies and, by so doing, made themselves
essentially irrelevant. In the first year of Bush's second term, the
Democrats occasionally were more feisty, behaving as an Opposition Party
should. But they still tend to tiptoe around controversial topics
(electoral integrity and fraud, for example, which they won't touch with
an 11-foot pole, and withdrawal from Iraq ASAP), still terrified of being
called "unpatriotic" or "soft on terrorism" or "sore losers." Reid
exhibits some starch in the Senate, and Pelosi at times in the House, and
they've been able to keep their forces united on enough occasions so that,
in alliance with GOP moderates, they've been able to give Bush&Co. fits.
Note to Democratic leaders: Stand up straight and fight back, or you'll
wind up on the dung-heap of history, tossed there by your aroused, angry
Democratic base. If they can get no leverage in turning around their
party, they may go the third-party route, along with many disaffected
moderate Republicans.
7. If you compromise on morality at the top, inventing rationales for
bad behavior, eventually that weakened ethical system will work its way
down the chain of command.
For example, if you assert the right of the government to torture
prisoners in your care, eventually torture will be widespread throughout
the system. If you set up secret CIA prisons around the world where
especially recalcitrant prisoners are interrogated with "enhanced"
methods, and you "render" prisoners to countries where excruciatingly
painful torture methods are employed, you have lost any moral high ground
you might have once possessed. In addition, you guarantee that U.S.
soldiers held prisoner will be treated in the same manner, and you provide
effective recruiting arguments for militant Islamists around the globe. In
short, torture is a self-destructive policy -- "stupid" would be another
word for it. And, of course, once the feds began massive spying on
ordinary citizens, the states and cities followed suit by spying on local
peace groups and non-violent activists.
8. If you invade a country, you automatically become occupiers and de
facto governors of that country. Ergo, you get blamed for everything that
goes wrong. Addendum: It is always easier to get in than to get out.
The U.S. invaded Iraq based on a neo-con belief that victory would come
cheap, and they could mold the country into a lackey state easily and
quickly. There was no Plan B. Its military Occupation ran into a deadly
reality on the ground: nationalism, tribalism, religious fervor
demonstrated their solid strength (as they do around the world). The U.S.
can not "win" in Iraq, in the same way the U.S. could not "win" in
Vietnam; eventually, America, in a prolonged and unwinnable stalemate,
will have to leave. Better now than later, after tens of thousands more
American troops and Iraqi civilians will have been slaughtered or maimed.
Bush could declare "victory" now: We helped get them on their feet,
they've chosen their own government, they desire us to go, and now it's
time for us to feel good about our contributions and bring our soldiers
home. But he won't. He and his friends still covet all that oil, and still
want to topple a few more regimes in the Middle East; it's not outside the
realm of possibility that as Bush's poll numbers continue to head for the
cellar, Iran's nuclear power plants will be bombed or Syria will be
attacked. Anything to change the subject away from Bush&Co./GOP crimes and
corruption.
9. Imperialism is even more difficult to maintain in the 21st Century
than it was in earlier times.
All imperial countries, blinded by greed and power-hunger (or sometimes
even by idealism), eventually are forced out of their colonies. Ask the
Romans, the French in Indochina and North Africa, the Russians in Eastern
Europe and Afghanistan. The U.S. is no different, and is learning to its
chagrin that ultimate military power doesn't mean control on the ground.
The U.S. is running up a half-trillion in debt fighting this unnecessary
war of choice in Iraq, bringing corruption on a grand scale to that
country, losing its moral soul with its torture policies; to top it all
off, the citizens of Iraq in poll after poll indicate they'd like us to
leave. It's time to learn what history has to teach about the high price
paid for imperial arrogance and intransigence and get out of there. In
short, native populations over time tend to defend their homelands
successfully against foreign invaders. Even if the U.S. left Iraq, America
still would be the 800-lb. gorilla in the world, and probably could get
most of what it wants through diplomacy and economic power -- "soft
imperialism." Overt imperialism, controlling the world at gunpoint, is on
its way out; the U.S. quagmire in Iraq demonstrates the limits of
superpower status. But Bush&Co. believe history (and the laws of science)
don't apply to them. So much the worse for them, for those around the
globe, and for us U.S. citizens. In the Bush worldview, it doesn't matter
that the U.S. is not liked, it's enough that it is feared; taking and
controlling -- that's mostly what's important to these guys.
10. Ethics always will be years, sometimes decades, behind the
ramifications of technological/scientific breakthroughs; the passage of
laws dealing with those ramification often will lag even further behind.
Whatever the weapon or technology, if you invent it, it will be used, and
abused. Our high-tech computing and surveillance systems, for example,
permit the government to mine data on millions of emails and phone calls
at a time -- and so it's doing so, supposedly directed at foreign
terrorists but involving American citizens in the process. (Since
everything connected to this eavesdropping is top-secret, it's possible
that political "enemies" of Bush&Co. are deliberately being targeted.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.) This type of domestic spying is
against the law -- and should be enough to impeach Bush and Cheney. Bush
is shameless, saying he'll continue to violate the law, because he's the
"commander-in-chief" during "wartime" and thus has the authority and power
to do whatever he chooses to do, so what are you going to do about it?
Similarly, there are technological breakthroughs that permit even more
violations of the right to privacy, and they are being utilized also, or
will be soon. The laws haven't even come close to catching up with the
ramifications of those scientific breakthroughs.
11. When logic meets faith, most of the time the rational mind
disappears, until the day when brute facts intervene to such an extent as
to demand attention, action and forsaking of denial.
The world is moving so fast, forcing social and cultural changes so
quickly, that many people become frightened, confused, irritated, and long
for simpler, more stable societies of old. Religious fundamentalism
provides all the black-and-white answers; doesn't matter if it's
Christianity, Judasim, Islam, the syndrome is the same. Islam has its
Taliban and strict ayatollahs, we have our conservative religious leaders,
our own tight-assed Christian Taliban and ayatollahs, who preach the old
verities and simplified nostrums that are so attractive to many of our
fellow Americans. No matter what the Bush scandal, he can always count on
that 25-30% who support him on religious grounds. But more and more
citizens are starting to realize the inherent dangers in permitting such
religious power to go unchecked, especially when those beliefs come into
conflict with science -- on, say, global warming -- and are starting to
rebel.
12. An organism -- a human being, a nation -- needs accurate
information in order to compose a reasonable assessment of reality and
thus survive the dangers out there. Without that accurate assessment of
reality, you can expect disaster.
Rarely does one get accurate information from the Bush Administration
about anything. Down in their isolated bunker, they either are fooling
themselves, or trying to fool us -- more likely both. The mass-media,
corporate-owned and largely conservative in nature, are complicit in
keeping the truth from their readers, viewers and listeners. (The
so-called "liberal" New York Times, for just one example, had the NSA
data-mining story and could have released it a year earlier than it did --
and thus probably affected the outcome of the 2004 election -- but, at the
behest of the Bush Administration, chose not to publish it.) To get a more
accurate assessment of reality, one has to go to less-controlled media:
the foreign press, smaller and independent publications and media outlets
(for example, The Nation, Air America, and a few liberal radio talk-show
hosts), and, especially, to the largely uncensored internet journalists,
websites and bloggers. Only when the wealthy liberal/progressive
opposition is willing to put its money where its politics are -- by buying
up and founding cable networks, newspapers, radio stations and think tanks
-- will there be some political parity in the mass-media. If you want a
free press, as A.J. Liebling said, set up one of your own.
Let us not ignore reporter I.F. Stone's famous maxim: "The first rule of
journalism is that governments lie. All governments lie, but disaster lies
in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give
out."
Not a bad description of the Bush Administration. Amen, Izzy.
Copyright 2006, by Bernard Weiner
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international
relations, has taught at various universities, was formerly a
writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The
Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). To comment:
crisispapers@comcast.net .
